Plus Portland music news! by Nolan Parker This Mercury Music Picks goes out to all the soggy ladies, all the soggy ladies! It’s been wet out there lately and yet, I keep going to all these shows and they keep getting packed out— y’all do be making this music editor emotional. But wait, there’s more! More shows to go check out, more sights and sounds to experience, and more community to be built through music. If you doubt these words, have a read below and be stunned by the sheer volume of excellence flowing through our fair city.  Friday, March 21 Slime / Paperclip / Street Policy / Thermite / As The Life Leaves Your Eyes  For fans of NWHC Fest, These Fucking Hands, Marrow Naming your band after a substance universally recognized as foul—and really letting us know what the music is akin to—is powerful, just like Portland’s own Slime. This is some real beatdown hardcore—plan accordingly. Alternately, if you name your band after something hyper-useful and commonplace, like Bellingham’s sludgy, noisy powerviolence crew Paperclip, you will probably surprise some listeners. Hardcore shows usually have a bunch of bands on the bill, this concert doesn’t disappoint. Street Policy, Thermite, and As the Life Leaves Your Eyes—all Portland bands—will be opening. (Ask a punk, Fri March 21, 7 pm, $12, all ages) Astrid Sonne / Jasmine Wood For fans of Mary Jane Dunphe, Holland Andrews, Claire Rousay If lush minimalism is a thing, the Danish composer Astrid Sonne nails it. Tight, concise beats are paired with subtly vast string and synth arrangements with Sonne’s almost deadpan voice laying over top of it all. Her Great Doubt album from last year is gorgeous, bringing up a lot of hard topics, like asking herself (and the listener), “Do you wanna have a baby?” and revealing that she’d risk her life to feel her lost lover’s body next to hers. Portland-born composer, Jasmine Wood opens the show. Fans of her expansive 2024 album, simply called Piano Reverb, will recognize this as a truly special evening, since Wood is now based in Dublin, Ireland. It’s pretty special to have both grace the Holocene stage. (Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison, Fri March 21, 6 pm, $20, tickets here, 21+) Sunday, March 23 Kim Deal / Morgan Nagler For fans of the Breeders, Pixies, Porridge Radio “I don’t know where I am and I don’t care” is the opening line and tone-setter for the entirety of Nobody Loves You More, Kim Deal’s solo debut LP and her first new music in years. Deal’s musical CV is immaculate, from her own groups to contributing vocals on various releases by Sonic Youth, This Mortal Coil, and the For Carnation. It’s pretty legendary to see Deal on her first headlining tour after a solo album, even more so to also catch Morgan Nagler, an artist who has collaborated with Deal both as a solo artist and in the Breeders. You usually hear Nagler crooning with her bands Whispertown and Supermoon, but she’s solo on this outing with Deal. For sure check out her dreamy new single, “Cradle the Pain”. (Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark, Sun March 23, 8 pm, SOLD OUT, all ages) Boltcutter / Forced To Suffer / Witness Chamber / Mad Choice For fans of NWHC Fest, Whatsdysmorphia, Outta Pocket Eugene’s Boltcutter, some of the hardest slammer hardcore around these days, have been busy as hell with a massive US tour that has taken them from Cali to Texas and back up to the PNW. We’re lucky they’re bringing their San Jose pals, Forced to Suffer, up from the Bay with them. Boise straight edge stompers, Witness Chamber, are pullin’ up as well, along with local new kids on the block, Mad Choice. You got some aggression you need to get out in the pit? This is the one! (Ask a punk, Sun March 23, 7 pm, $15, all ages) Monday, March 24 The Linda Lindas / Be Your Own Pet For fans of Bratmobile, Team Gina, Necking The Linda Lindas have been hard rocking against sexism, racism, and homophobia since some of them were literal pre-teens. Now in their late teens and early 20s, the Linda Lindas are still RAT (rocking against Trump), all while continually honing their skills. Give ‘em a few years; they’re gonna be headlining stadiums and the biggest music festivals out there. Seeing them at the Crystal is the most intimate setting you’ll get from now on. Iconic mid-’00s brat-punks, Be Your Own Pet, get this rowdy party started. (Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside, Mon March 24, 7 pm, $35.50, tickets here, all ages) Amyl & the Sniffers / Sheer Mag For fans of Bikini Kill, Lambrini Girls, Jealous I once DJ’d an Amyl & the Sniffers show at the tiny, now shuttered, Berlin club, Zukunft am Ostkreutz. Let me tell you, it’s not a facade—they're the real fucking deal: they shred onstage every night and then party, hard, after every show. For example: At this performance, they did the classic huffing poppers onstage from random concert-goers, but at some point, someone lost a white go-go boot in the pit, which was passed up to Amy on stage. To get the boot back, the owner had to do a shoey. In Australia, where the band is from, a shoey is when you chug an entire beer out of a shoe, or in this case, a go-go boot. The show stopped while the shoey was chugged, the crowd cheered, and rock & roll is alive and well. Hoping someone loses a go-go boot at this Crystal show. 🍻 (Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside, Tues March 25, 8 pm, SOLD OUT, all ages) Danzig / Down / Abbath / Cro-Mags For fans of Motörhead, Helmet, Vader Since the age of 13, I’ve wanted nothing more than to bang heads with Danzig. The realization of this teen dream isn’t for me alone, but for all of us to share in together. Come, let us bang heads with He Who Has Given Us So Much, Glenn Danzig. Will he play Misfits classics or stick to his solo catalog? Hard to say, but this kiddo can dream. Along for the ride are southern rockers, Down; Norwegian shredders, Abbath; and original punks from the ’80s, Cro-Mags. (Moda Center, 1 N Center Ct, Wed March 26, 6 pm, $39+, tickets here, all ages) Also very worth it… Friends of Noise presents Spring BreakFest ’25 at Oregon Contemporary - March 22, tickets here Alabaster DePlume / Patrick Shiroishi at Polaris Hall - March 22, SOLD OUT Hit Like a Girl / Madska / Sad Boy Union / Myriads at Shanghai Tunnel - March 23, tickets here Sharada Shashidhar & Caleb Buchanan / Luke Wyland / Maxx Katz at Leaven Community Center - March 23, tickets here Portland Music News: Check out the two excellent, recently published pieces by our man on the ground, Ben Salmon. The first is an album review of the long-time, Portland heavy-hitters, Gaytheist, and the second is a review of Darci Phenix’s dreamy new folk album inspired by the PNW. Our music columnist, Jenni Moore, does it again, dropping knowledge on us all in her latest Hear In Portland. 777 Booking, Friends of Noise, and PICA announced the line-up for this year’s NWHC Fest last week and it’s a dang doozy! Check out our round-up of the fest’s best here.  I recently sat down with City Councilor Jamie Dunphy to talk about how he wants to make Portland a music capitol again, check that feature out here or in our latest Spring Arts print issue!  ...read more read less